Jste zde

Foreigner in a common class or Education

This portal is determined mainly for Czech teachers, therefore the English version is only informative to make an elementary idea what teachers can find here.

This section is mainly for elementary and high school teachers: learn more about the basic principles of inclusion, its practical aplication in concrete subjects, how to work with a multinational class and about the principles of multicultural education.

The presence of a foreign pupil may seem to be a difficult task for a teacher with no experience with teaching foreigners. The fact that there is somebody in your class who speaks a different language, can be perceived as a disturbance and a serious obstacle for the teacher and her/his educational activity in the classroom. How can a pupil, who doesn´t understand, be involved in the educational process? How can I pay attention to her/him without neglecting the others? How can I clasify a pupil who doesn´t know how to express herself/himself neither orally nor in writing? What approach should I take towards this pupil? The teacher can feel that she/he cannot meet these expectations and become sceptical or give up on trying to involve this pupil in the education process.

To overcome these feelings, one must realize that different language is not the only difference that teachers encounter in the classroom. Any educational process is actually working with diversity. The class is never a homogenous group, there are always pupils with different abilities and skills. Every pupil is a unique personality with different experiences, family background and biographic potential. And all these factors influence their attitude towards learning and the pupil´s position in the class. That´s why the ability to work out the diversity in the class is a crucial quality in a good teacher´s professional attitude towards teaching and working with a class.

If a pupil with a different mother tongue is part of the class or school, it means a greater need to differentiate the learning content and use different attitude. Inclusive education is the crucial condition for integration of pupils with a different mother tongue - who belong to the group of pupils with special learning needs, into the mainstream education. In this section you will find information about the principals of inclusive education and practical advice how to work with these pupils. The section titled inclusion in practice offers tips how to work with pupils with a different mother tongue in the mainstream classroom. You can also find downloadable materials here - e.g. vocabulary for specific subjects.

The chapter Materials and tips for specific school subjects summarizes the experience of professionals working in META, gained during their work as a supporters for the pupils with a different mother tongue in schools or during their cooperation with the teachers in working groups. The purpose of these working groups was to find ways of teaching that will encourage the progress (not only) of the Czech language skills of pupils with a different mother tongue. You will find the outcomes of these groups, practical tips and learning materials for the pupils in the chapters dedicated to concrete subjects.

Working with a group, where there is a pupil with a different mother tongue is discussed in a separate section. You can learn the basic rules of helping these pupils integrate among the rest of the class in this section.

You will find various procedures and work methods which help integrate the multicultural education into the learning proces in the section dedicated to this topic. Also by means of multicultural education you can engage pupils with a different mother tongue to be more involved in the learning process and - as naturally as possible - verbalize their different socio-cultural origin.

Another issue connected to the phenomenon of migration is learning how to think in European and global context. Here you will find materials connected to migration and related phenomena.